Chapter 103- The aftermaths of Truth.

Chapter 103: Chapter 103- The aftermaths of Truth.

The parking lot had gone quiet by now. The sirens had faded, the murmuring crowd thinned out. Smoke still curled off Building Four in slow, gray clouds.

Leo and the others stood watching it burn. The building’s fire suppression system should have kicked in and killed the flames long ago, But it hadn’t.

Nothing they tried seemed to touch the fire.

Even Elona couldn’t explain it. She’d invested heavily in making sure that system could handle anything. She was the richest person alive; corners like that didn’t get cut on her watch. yet here she was facing the thing she made sure she wouldn’t have to deal with.

Leo had a theory, though—something about the sudden spike in mana concentration feeding the fire, keeping it alive past where it should have died out....

The crowd had gone still, workers quietly checking names off a list, making sure everyone was accounted for.

Bubbles wandered over and settled at Elona’s feet, coat still gray with dust. She ran a hand between his ears, slow and steady, while her other hand held a phone to her ear.

"Say nothing," she said into it. "Don’t tell anyone the cause—we don’t even know it ourselves. Not the workers, not the press, no one. I’ll handle it."

She hung up.

Bubbles pressed his head against her leg, his whole solid weight leaning into her—the person who’d run back into the fire for him. He licked at her hand, sensing her tension, and she went back to petting him with both hands.

Leo watched quietly from the side, his thoughts drifting to the two cubs back home. They’d be with Hugh right now, probably wondering where he was.

...

The fire eventually burned itself out. Building Seven had escaped mostly unscathed—the conference room in particular hadn’t seen so much as smoke damage.

Inside, Leo and the others settled around a long table. Monitors along one wall showed grainy night-vision footage of the campus. Elona sat at the head of the table, maps spread out in front of her, markers pinning down different locations.

Seven sites, marked in red.

Giza. Stonehenge. Uluru. Machu Picchu. Easter Island. Bermuda. The Mariana Trench.

The epicenters of the earthquake.

Two more markers sat off to the side—additional origin points for smaller shockwaves, weaker than the main seven but still part of the pattern.

"Seven locations confirmed," Elona said. "Monitoring hasn’t ruled on the other two yet, but all nine are being watched closely."

Leo studied the map, unable to draw a direct line between these places and Myth Online—but he was certain the connection was there somewhere.

"There’s no precedent for this," Elona continued. "Earthquakes hitting simultaneously from seven—now possibly nine—separate origin points, worldwide. Nothing like it has ever happened. Our researchers are still trying to make sense of it."

Leo kept staring at the map, at the dots scattered across oceans and continents.

"Think of the world like a cup," he said finally.

"The world’s a cup, and mana’s the water inside it. Like I said before, mana’s been thickening around us ever since the game showed up—we just couldn’t detect it. But it’s finally crossed some kind of threshold. My guess is these seven spots are where the cup’s walls are thinnest. That’s where all the mana’s been leaking through." He said it half like he actually understood it, half like he was making it up as he went.

Elona shook her head. "Then what explains the earthquake? The fire?..... Is the cup crying now?"

"...Maybe?" Leo admitted.

He thought about it a moment longer. "Actually, the tremors don’t fit that theory at all. A leak shouldn’t shake the whole cup."

He glanced toward the window, where Building Four sat blackened against the night. "Tonight—those beams, the pipes, the bolts—none of that broke the normal way. Steel that’s fire resistant grade-rated to survive exactly this kind of heat just melted, like it was nothing. I’ve never seen metal fail like that."

"So what are you saying?" Elona pressed, eyes narrowing.

"I don’t know," Leo admitted.

Master Rook, who’d stayed silent up to this point, finally spoke.

"Kid, your cup theory’s not bad. But I’ve got some information that’s messing with my head right now."

Both Leo and Elona turned to him.

"My family’s old," Rook said. "Older than most people would believe. We’ve got manuscripts—superstitious garbage, most people would call it—but the sites marked on that map match descriptions I’ve read in them. Old warnings. The manuscripts call those locations ground that belongs to something older than the Earth itself. And they warn, in no uncertain terms, to leave them alone."

"Belonging to what now?" Leo asked.

Rook shook his head. "No clear description. Nothing that ever made sense." He was sweating now, more than the room’s temperature explained.

"You okay?" Leo asked.

Rook ignored the question and pressed on. "By my grandfather’s time, it had already faded into nothing but old stories. Nobody took it seriously."

"The manuscripts describe a world once thick with qi, with all kinds of energy. Mages. Martial artists. Cultivators. Even gods, apparently, walking around. And then—everything changed. The records just... stop."

He looked between Leo and Elona, and at Bubbles, who was panting for no discernible reason.

"There’s another line that stuck with me. It said the ground was never dead—just sleeping. That someday, when the heavens turned, it would wake up. We always figured that was just folklore."

Something clicked for Leo—like he’d just found the missing link tying these locations back to Myth Online.

Rook’s words were simple, but the weight behind them was enormous.

Without quite meaning to, Leo tried pulling up his status panel out of habit. Nothing came.

"Well—at least the system panel isn’t showing up yet," he said aloud. "Once the world actually wakes up, though, it will be. Here, in reality."

Rook’s eyes went wide. "You’re serious?" There was something almost hungry in his expression. "You’re telling me I could get skills and talents from the game, right here, in real life?"

Leo looked at him and sighed. "Yeah. That’s basically what I’ve been saying this whole time."

Elona exhaled slowly, finally weighing in on everything she’d just heard—stories that sounded completely absurd on their face, and yet somehow the only explanation that fit. It was that or accept she had no idea how Leo lifted that beam, why the earthquake hit nine places at once, or why the fire refused to die.

"We might only have a few months," Leo added. "A year, at the most, before the world fully wakes up and the sync completes. We need to use that time. Get stronger. Because if we don’t, we won’t be able to defend this planet when whatever’s coming actually arrives."

...

"So what do we do?" Elona asked.

Leo looked her dead in the eye, dead serious. "We get stronger."

A vein practically pulsed at her temple. "That’s not a plan."

"It’s the only one that works." He nodded toward the map. "Once the tutorial ends, people with real power are going to be walking around. Bullets won’t stop them. Animals are going to mutate—might even start attacking cities. If we’re not strong enough by then, we’re just meat on a chopping block waiting for the knife."

"And how, exactly, do we get stronger?"

"Training. Starting with you joining Myth Online."

Elona sat back, pressing her palms against her forehead, clearly turning something over. Then she looked back up, and there was a new resolve in her eyes.

"Okay. Where do I sign up?"

Leo blinked. "...What?"

"The game. A class, a guild, whatever you’re offering—I’m in, Mr. Stone." She pulled a tablet toward her. "The company’s actually got a presence in Myth Online already. A corporate guild, built for market intel and data gathering, mostly sitting idle. They offered me a unique class about a month back. I never even logged in."

She said it almost like a confession. "I was always busy. There was always a launch, a board meeting, some crisis that felt more important at the time."

"Elona—sorry, Ms. Mosk—you’re going to need to catch up fast. Though something tells me you’ll pick it up quicker than most."

"Elona’s fine," she cut in. "If the two of you are going to be dragging me into insane situations like tonight, you might as well drop the formalities."

Rook and Leo exchanged a glance and nodded.

Leo steered the conversation back. "Oh, by the way—either of you know anything about this Samuel guy? The one who triggered the Inverse quest?"

He added, "And Inverse isn’t something to take lightly. From what I know, they’re basically the enemy of the entire cosmos. And my class is tied to them somehow—I still don’t fully understand how."

Elona scrolled through her tablet. "My team flagged that name this morning, actually. Why do you ask?"

"I want to know whether his quest is meant to help the Inverse—or fight it."

She thought about it for a moment, expression turning helpless. "Honestly? I think only Samuel would know that. And even then... what if he’s being manipulated without realizing it?"

Leo’s expression darkened.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I hope not."